Back to School

It does not seem to matter that winter break has come and gone. Despite that fact that I hardly dented my long list of things to accomplish, I am ready to get back to PAFA. I miss the structure, the guidance and of course, my friends.

It has only been a few days and the work is already piling up. For life painting, we are beginning a 15 week pose. I am excited because I get to work on a large scale and have a chance to bring my painting to a more finished conclusion.

Here is a sketch I made of the model. I took time to analyze the pose and gesture. Next, I will make thumb nail sketches to experiment with possible compositions. Then I will make black/white value studies, as well as, color studies.

I know that this is going to be a great year!!!

Charcoal preparatory sketches, an oil self portrait in progress and an oil sketch.

I have the opportunity this semester to do a very long painting. 15 weeks long. I spent today trying to get a handle on the pose. These are all 20 minute sketches from various angles around the room.








Here's an self portrait I'm working on for Al Gury. I am doing a burnt umber pick-out style underpainting here. I wanted to try and emphasize better control over the value by limiting it to 5 tones. I acheived some limited success..this time.



And finally, here's an oil sketch I did in Bruce Samuelson's life painting class. I have heard very good things about this instructor and I have high hopes for the semester in here.

Memory drawing and quicks in charcoal

Finally, PROOF that I don't know what I'm doing.
I love to rise to a challenge. It brings out my contrary nature. My first day back at PAFA brought me just the sort of test I like. One of my all-time favorite instructors at PAFA, Scott Noel, asked us to prove just how much we really knew about the human figure. SO, without presenting us with a model to study or any other preamble..he asked us to draw a figure from memory...just like that. On the first day of class!...just "GO"! I thought that this was a profoundly useful diagnostic and just the sort of thing I need to start doing all the time. I like the idea of confronting my weakest areas and looking at the ugly deficiencies in my skills. That's why I like quicks or croquis, because there is not enough time to hide your errors. Anyway, here's that drawing.

Interestingly, he said that these drawings also showed evidence of what we thought was important in a drawing...I'll have to give that more thought.

Today in one of my other classes, taught by Renee Foulks (another phenomenal instructor and painter), I had to do some 5 minute quicks. They're ugly too.


So, when I got home today,I decided to do a memory drawing of that seated pose. Here's that dwg.


No pain, No gain right? My tentative plan is to combine anatomy studies with quicks and memory drawings until I feel more confident. I have no doubt that I will see major improvements by the end of the semester.

New classes at PAFA and quick oil painting sketches

I don't know how it happens. It does it everytime though. The break is over! School starts back up on Monday...and I, for one, am PSYCHED! I am truly excited about the line-up of professors that I will be studying with this semester. Here's some links for ya: Scott Noel, Al Gury, Renee Foulks, John Horn, Bruce Samuelson, Steve Weiss, and Patrick Connors

I had lots of plans for the break but I accomplished relatively few things. I was crazy busy for awhile. It was hectic up until about 10 days ago and then... it all stopped. It was all too much. I fell into a funk and couldn't get things started again. Feh...

The thing that helped me get revved up to go again was the loose micro-community of painters we've put together over at PAFA. A few friends of mine have sort of banded ourselves together to help each other squeeze every last opportunity we have out of our time at PAFA. We call ourselves The Dirty Palette Club. My tuition was worth every penny just because it put me in the same room as these awesome people. We meet up, paint and talk. We've done lots more talking and laughing than painting so far but, here's a few of the sketches I've done.






Check out their work from our meetings here.

In other news, my brother-in-law donated his old laptop to me. It was a fixer-upper but, I think the system is stable now and that should allow me to edit photos and create the website I have been talking about. SWEET!

Recovering from the Semester

Hey everyone!

I'm sorry I've kind of fallen off the face of the earth for a little while...the end of the semester was extremely busy and ehxausting and I've been spending all of Christmas break trying to recover from it. I've finally gotten around to photographing all my work from last semester and so I'll be posting alot of it over the next few weeks.

I'm starting off with posting some of the final work that I did for my portrait class with Al Gury. The first one here is a quick self-portrait study that I did as one of the final assingments for that class. My goal was to really work very loosely and quicky with it; I completed it pretty much all in a long one-day session.




The is a portrait that I did of my sister from a photograph. I posted a photo of it in progress earlier in the semester. I was surprised to find that I actually really enjoyed working from a photograph. I found that it gave me the time that I needed which I would not have had working from a live model, and I also liked being able to work alone without the presence of another person there. I didn't find that the photograph flattened things too much, and it actually created some really interesting color distortions which I wouldn't have observed in real life. I'm definitely planning on doing some more portrait work with photo references in the future.



This is one of my portrait from in class. Towards the end of the semester we had a six week pose where we were able to do larger "formal" portraits. I wasn't taking the uninstructed for that class, so I didn't have as much time as I would've liked, but I'm still relatively pleased with how it turned out.



I've lots more to post still, so stay tuned!

A sketch in acryla gouache on watercolor paper

I did this illustrative sketch the other night while watching crime documentaries on cable. I didn't start off with anything in particular in mind...I just let it develop. I guess I should pay more attention to what I am listening to while I'm painting :) This is Holbein's Acryla-Gouache on hot press watercolor paper, 18"x12".....also for sale.

In terms of sales, I'm still trying to find time... but, I plan to set up an easy way to purchase these student works. In any case, I will have it done before the beginning of the semester.

Oil paintings from finals at PAFA

Heads up. I am going to start selling off paintings to help with school costs. Take a look at the things I have posted on here since we started. Unless I have stated that I plan to continue working on the painting, you can pretty much assume it is for sale. If you are interested in any of these let me know. These are student works and will be priced as such.

Here are some more of the pics from finals...these are things that have not been posted in their "final" state.

Here is one of my final projects and I think one of the most successful and challenging paintings I have done so far. It is a self-portrait done without using photo reference. I thought my paint handling, use of color and shape all really began to come together here. Of course, I did make some mistakes. As usual, I made the head too big. In some areas I needed to create better transitions. I would have liked to pull the paint strokes around the forms differently as well. I plan to sand out some of this and repaint.



This is one of my pieces for finals. I have to say I was very pleased with how this painting turned out. It took about 9 hours and I really felt as if I was painting here. I would have liked to have been less timid during this painting. I am sure that I could have covered much more ground since my time with the model was limited. It is for sale.


This was a fun experiment. I was really much more concerned about blending mediums and using powerful colors than I was about the subject matter. This is cut paper, acrylic, gesso, pastel, black and white ink on illustration board. Also for sale.



This painting was quite a long figure study and even though it has become rather blended and many of the powerful colors I used have been lost, it taught me how important it is to keep strokes and colors fresh and powerful. Those are the attributes which will give a painting its depth and wall presence. The major mistake was that I oiled out before the painting was dry enough. I will be using retouch varnish to prevent this kind of error again.


This painting was a modest little still life that I set up to practice identifying color relationships and portraying them in the correct value key. After the previous debacle in still life class, I chose to do something simple and without any preparatory drawing or underpainting. The previous project taught me that it's important for me to make mistakes and paint over...I cannot become rigid or precious about my work. I still need lots of room to make discoveries. Also, also for sale.